The rabbis of the Talmud, living as they did in the first centuries C.E., did not share our modern intuitions about these subjects. Under Jewish law, rape is indeed a serious crime, with penalties laid out in detail in the Book of Deuteronomy. But in this week’s Daf Yomi reading, as the rabbis explored the penalties for rape of a virgin, it became clearer than ever that rape was not the same crime to them as it is to us. Today, we consider it a crime of violence against an individual; for the rabbis, it was more significantly a crime against a woman’s reputation, which had serious effects on her social standing and her marriage prospects. Their remedy for rape, then, was not to imprison or execute the rapist, but to insist that he make reparation to the victim’s family—either by paying a fine or by offering to marry his victim.As I have remarked before, the world of the ancients was a very different world from ours.
Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
